Ozu had a silent film set at Shochiku that he didn’t want to give up, a silent film cameraman he had a contract with, and didn’t have a definitive vision of how he wanted dialogue to work. He waited until he felt it was right and began using sound in 1936 with The Only Son (Hitori Musuko).
Of all Ozu’s films, his most famous is Tokyo Story (Tokyo Monogatari), a film about the ungrateful and indifferent children of an elderly couple who, close to death, go to visit their children in the city. Connor asked his students to watch the film and says that the beauty of the retrospective was that he could direct them to dozens more to watch on their own time.
“Without a functioning film archive, and with a program that is structurally so small, there would never be moments to say, ‘Here is one film, go see twenty more,’” he says. “You have to see movies on your own to make them dear to you.”
The retrospective, with its vast scope and insight into the work of one of history’s most renowned and accomplished filmmakers, affords all film lovers the opportunity to do just that.
movie times
TOKYO TWILIGHT - MAY 8, 9:15 P.M.
GOOD MORNING - MAY 7, 7 P.M. AND MAY 10, 9 P.M.
LATE AUTUMN - MAY 7, 9 P.M. AND MAY 9, 9 P.M.
FLOATING WEEDS - MAY 8, 7 P.M.
AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON - MAY 11, 7 P.M.